“I only fear for thy safety,” she said, bravely.
“Have no fears of that,” he returned, “hasten, we have no time to spare.”
No further words were spoken, but hurriedly embracing each other as though years instead of minutes was to be their term of separation, she disappeared into the darkness.
He closed the door and bolted it again. Then he knelt beside the dead. His hands trembled in spite of the determination with which he set himself to accomplish his project. The excitement, apprehension of discovery, and the horror of the scene, almost unnerved him; but he covered his eyes with one of his hands for a moment, shook off the feeling of weakness, and then moved the body to one side, to clear it of the pool of blood. He unbuttoned the buff doublet of the corpse, and drew it off. Next he stripped it of the jerkin, belt and scabbard, then the shoes, hose and trunks and shirt. A naked body lay before him under the flickering light of the candles. Heavy footsteps in an adjoining room startled him, and he glanced at one of the corners beside the great chimney as though expecting a form to come forth. But immediately the source of the noise became apparent, and the chorus of a bacchanal song jarred him with its unfitness:
“O for a bowl of fat Canary,
Rich Palermo, sparkling sherry,
Some nectars else from Juno’s dairy,
O these draughts would make us merry.”
This song of John Lilly, one which he had sung many times with riotous companions, could not but cause him to add, in the momentary relaxation afforded:
And if the tapster does not bring
The draughts for which you’re clamoring,
Come drain with me the bitter bowl
I drink at passing of a soul.
They were lines provoked half in jest half in earnest; and again as quietness prevailed, he relapsed into his previous condition of profound melancholy. His task was but half completed; he unbuckled his own sword belt, and his fingers, which had again begun to tremble, let the scabbard fall clattering at his feet. He shook himself as though his body were the unruly instrument of a prompting and immovable mind. If this action had any result whatever it did not prevent his hands from wrenching several buttons from the front of his scarlet doublet, as he stripped it off. Still he proceeded in his task.
One by one his rich but rough-used vestments were thrown off, until the living was as the dead. The work was now bringing the calm which afforded speed to his movements, so that in an interval he had dressed the corpse in his garments, leaving it just as it had fallen on the floor. He next retreated to the alcove and washed himself clear of blood.
The buff coat was stained and spotted by the life-current of the dead man. He cast it to one side. The rest of the garments were free of any traces of the catastrophe. In these he dressed himself; buckled the belt around his waist; picked up the long murderous-looking blade of Ferrera and sheathed the same in its scabbard against his puffed upper hose. From a hook upon the wall, in the alcove, he took a long dark cloak with white silk lining and silver buckle at the collar. This he threw over his shoulders so that the absence of a coat or doublet was not perceptible.